International Women's Day (POCTech)

Social Diversity

Here is a breakdown of the discussion we had at the March Poctech meeting @ Google Campus held on International Women’s day.

Question of the day

Our question of the day was titled
“Challenges faced by women entrepreneurs and how to overcome them”

“Discuss.”

Bybreen spoke about the differences between having a mentor or having a sponsor.

And the fact that there is a lack of generosity when it comes to finding a sponsor for a woman who wants to be an entrepreneur.

There are a lack of people in the wider network who are willing to become sponsors and open the doors to women as opposed to providing a cosy chat and not doing nothing.

Action orientated people

Bybreen is very action orientated and the enablers she has come across tend to not go anywhere.

I spoke about my experiences with lots of unconscious and blatant racism within the web development services community.

I spoke about how I had tremendous challenges when I tried to apply for a position using the traditional route to employment.

As you may know there are different ways to get in to traditional employment and a number of years ago I joined a few meetups as a means to gain meaningful employment.

One of those meetups was organised by a person who was deliberately obfuscating and a narcissist. I walked away and recently launched a start-up with the means of providing a vehicle for disruption to gain work.

He kept on making lots of excuses as to why he hadn’t replied to my emails.

Check it the full context of this in a video listed below:
https://youtu.be/rTVHSNLnhzY

One of the Google hosts (Jean Miguel) recommended a book called Choose Yourself by James Altucher

Enablers

Google is an enabler and it’s a model that is helpful. Open the doors to others and things will flow back to you. This was a useful tip that I can use within the web development services realm.

Be the source of who you are and it can take time for seeds to take hold and bear fruit.

Others spoke about offering your skills as part of an exchange to others; this helps to create and add value to them. Its best to research the people you want to target and then connect within them on social networks. In my case, I can apply and exchange web development services skills for something new I would like to learn.

Putting all of your eggs in one basket

Another person spoke about not putting all your eggs in one basket. There are people who are not willing to help you and that’s OK. Just walk away and focus on the people who will derive value.

The host spoke about the sensitivities relating to unconscious bias and reaching out to lots and lots of people. There is a balance to be had which is associated with people’s biases.

This was a very interesting discussion on how to overcome the obstacles that lay in the paths of entrepreneurs and I learn't a number of tips and tricks that we will use in our web development services networking journey.

Stay tuned for further tips and tricks from www.ormrepo.co.uk/blogs. The link also provides information about the web development services we offer.